Making a note of all the “expert” commentators who seem genuinely surprised at the resistance “AI” is getting from the public and regulators. You don’t have to agree with the reasons, but they’re generally obvious with a basic analysis. Anybody surprised probably isn’t worth much as an analyst
It is partly that they do not see just how BAD the technology is, and how OBVIOUSLY on the wrong tracks it is.
I had a guy try to impress me with a long printout of an AI-observed scene, but I pointed out what was supposed to impress me was that the output was embedded in elegant English.
Nevertheless it could not reproduce the intelligence of a mere lizard or cat, which involves no language and so cannot POSSIBLY be modeled linguistically.
I resist because it is more of people doing stupid things while believing they are being smart.
(They could be smart but haven't the hint of a chance at it, in our benighted society. Only iconoclasts can be smart in the society we are plagued with.)
In case it is not obvious, human intelligence MUST have the same foundations as cat intelligence, even though language alters the nature of it tremendously. (Language makes it possible to accumulate knowledge across the generations.)
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter As an aside: Reptiles are a lot smarter than they've traditionally been given credit for. The study of reptile cognition before the 2000s was severely hampered by flawed test setups and methods that pretty much set the animals up to fail for reasons that have little to do with intelligence. Animals that can go for months without food aren't as strongly food-motivated as ones that starve after a few days, so they're also harder to motivate with food rewards! ...
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter ...add to that, we now know that most reptiles lose cognitive performance with lower temperature, and they will predictably perform poorly if they're plopped into a setup originally designed for rats (which is what many early studies of their cognitive function did).
It turns out tortoises are pretty good at navigating mazes, monitor lizards can count to six, crocodiles can use bait to lure prey and anoles can learn color codes and manipulate unfamiliar objects!
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter I've known lizards of various different species, and while they're generally slower than (most) mammals, it's completely evident that they have an awareness of themselves and the world they inhabit, and that they continually learn, adapt and remember things - including things their instincts don't at all give them any natural preparation for. After interacting with them for a bit, it gets pretty clear that reptile intelligence is ...
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter ...the same kind of intelligence as mammal intelligence, just with some very different adaptations and quirks.
Although we call the bits in our brains that we have in common with lizards "the lizard brain", actual lizards also have other brain parts that we don't have. You'd almost think the two lines of the family tree both kept building on those 330ish million year old shared structures separately! :-)
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter A while ago, I read Lars Chittka's "The Mind of a Bee", which is about the study of bee cognition. Not the famous capabilities of a hive of bees - that of individual bees.
It appears even they have individual dietary preferences - as well as "friend groups" (they prefer to hang out with specific other bees while at rest), and all sorts of other consistent individual "personality traits".
And they're eusocial insects with tiny, tiny brains!
@chemoelectric@baldur@pettter These findings were about common European honeybees. (but the idea of a "hive mind" is seriously misleading, anyway)
My point is: Even they have individuality (and individual intelligence). With that in mind, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that snakes and lizards (with brains many orders of magnitude larger and more complex) also do.
@datarama What I mean is that a honeybee is likely to be similar to a solitary bee, but ALSO eusocial. Not a separate development that is completely different from solitary bees and wasps and much stupider than them.
Human intelligence is affected by social setting more than is acknowledged BTW. Both positively and negatively. A PhD in quantum physics, for instance, can destroy an individually promising cerebral cortex that could have flourished with a degree in, say, chemistry.
Add comment